Two Group One races to offer All-Star Mile wildcards

Winning a Group One isn't often a foothold to a richer race, but that is the case for the Futurity Stakes and Australian Guineas in 2019.

Racing Victoria's executive general manager of racing and participant wellbeing Greg Carpenter declared winners of the weight-for-age Futurity (worth $500k), and the Australian Guineas ($1m), will be offered two of the four wildcard spots for the $5 million All-Star Mile.

Speaking to TABRadio on Friday, Carpenter said there is effectively only one other wildcard to sew up, declaring the first wildcard horse will be announced later next week.

"You have to view this new race, this new concept not through the traditional lens of Group One racing - first and foremost it is a popularity contest, an opportunity for people to vote-in the horse they would love to see run in the field," Carpenter said.

"There's the four wildcards, we will announce the first one of those late next week, and the final three by Monday March 4.

"Inevitably, one of them will go to the winner of the Futurity Stakes at Caulfield next week, if that horse is not in the Top 10.

"We've got horses like Alizee, Le Romain heading to that race, Manuel who won the Orr Stakes, Brave Smash, Land of Plenty, Material Man - the West Australian horse who's in the Top 10 - all heading to the Futurity so the winner of that race will be a worthy wildcard winner.

"We've said from the outset that the Australian Guineas winner on March 4th at Flemington, if that 3YO is not in the top 10 or not even nominated, we'll be offering them a wildcard.

"There'll be high quality horses, but there'll also be a sprinkling of horses who people have got behind and want to see run in the All-Star Mile."

Carpenter also explained the process of emergencies for the race, which are determined by highest career prizemoney earned of the entered horses that aren't inside the Top 10.

"Once the Top 10 voted horses have accepted and declared that they are running in the race, if Happy Clapper is not one of those 10, he will become first emergency because he's the highest prizemoney earner. Hartnell will become second emergency as he's the second highest prizemoney earner and so on," he said.

"If one of the top 10 horses by popular vote - or even if one of the wildcards has a setback - doesn't run, the owner ambassador drawn for that horse will stay in the competition, and if it's Happy Clapper, they will run for them.

"When we get to the Tuesday before the race on March the 12th, it'll become a traditional '14 horses, four emergencies'."

Carpenter conceded there will be a review of several facets of the All-Star Mile that have come under heavy criticism.

"We will absolutely be having a very thorough review process for 2020," he said.

"There's been a lot of learnings, a lot of advice.

"Even when we launched on the first day, I was harangued by people from New Zealand who said this is a great concept, we want to be part of it, but if you're outside of Australia you can't vote - so we'll be looking at that.

"There's been lots of discussion about the minimum rating requirement to get into the race - we'll review that.

"And the leaderboard - one of the other issues was people felt the leaderboard should go further down than the top 10.

"In actual fact, you can go onto the website and sort all the runners by the votes.

"But there's been lots of really good advice - we said from the outset this is the first time we've done it, we'll have a much longer lead time into All-Star Mile 2020 at Caulfield, and certainly we'll listen to the feedback we've been given and make changes where it's appropriate."